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The Journey
I have always had an abundance mentality and happily share my thoughts, ideas, even intellectual resources with anyone who asks, including my potential competitors. Some of them, now good friends, have asked me why I give away my ‘capital’. I do it for two reasons. Nobody owns thought and knowledge. You get it from someone…
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Breaking Free
Entrepreneurship is about taking charge of your own life. It takes a lot of courage, some insanity, strategic thinking, a thick skin, boundless energy, resilience like a truck tyre, sincerity, and hunger to succeed. If you don’t have these, get them. They are on the discount shelf in Walmart. You don’t think so? You are…
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Controlling our future
Our challenge, as educators, parents, leaders, and concerned citizens is to make this happen not for one person but on a scale that will show a difference in a short time. The longer we take to create a core group of independent people who can think, solve problems, take risk, own responsibility, and stand up…
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Entrepreneurship is the ultimate test of commitment
Entrepreneurship is all about spirit. But first we must recognize our purpose and then we need to consciously accept it. That is the scary part. But that is the threshold that must be crossed to demonstrate that we are in and not out. Choices are not always easy. As a matter of fact, all the…
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You get what you pay for
A word about writing a life goal for yourself: Only you need to see it. Only you need to be inspired by it. So, write something that is big enough to inspire. “I want to become a leadership trainer.” Ugh! Big deal. Who cares? “I want to become Mickey Mouse.” Now that is something. A…
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‘Tiger’ Goals
I have always looked for challenges. Anything that came easy did not excite me. My learning that it is the extraordinary goal that inspires extraordinary effort is very personal to me. In the plantation industry I constantly focused on setting new records. And over the years I was able to do this in all aspects…
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No pain, no gain
In this whole incident the one thing that is not logically explainable, but an essential part of leadership is the willingness to trust your inner voice. When you do that, you enter a state of grace. It is a state where you do things that you did not know were possible. You will find yourself…
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Building Winning Teams
My greatest gains in Ambadi were to do with conceptualizing learnings, about the importance of mentoring to empower frontline staff to take decisions and ownership. The results that we achieved had directly to do with our success in both areas. We took a group of discordant individuals and built them into a highly synchronized team…
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Ambadi, the turn-around strategy
When you are working in a high conflict environment a particularly important strategy is to proactively reduce the issues on which conflict may happen. The fewer the conflicting issues, the easier your role in resolving them. Remember, the key is to do this proactively without being asked. The more issues you resolve unilaterally, the more…
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Leadership is content independent
I stressed in my Staff meeting that if my Staff did what I asked them to do wholeheartedly, I would take responsibility for any failures. I learnt from experience that when you have a team that is skilled, but not motivated and afraid, then you as the leader need to be able to take the…